Eurotunnel buys business intelligence dashboard

Data pool allows 3:1 collecting to analysis time to be reversed

The Eurotunnel vehicle carrying service Le Shuttle has deployed a business intelligence system to glean improved information from its customers.

Around £100,000 initial investment was attributed to the project, Paul Lymath, Strategic Planning & Analysis Manager at Eurotunnel told CIO UK, who said the system reverses the ratio of time spent collecting information to analysing it.

"We used to spend 75 per cent of our time collecting data and only 25 per cent of time analysing it. It’s now the other way around," he said.

The QlikView Business Discovery platform will sit on top of a number of data sources throughout the company and will help it better understand data and improve the customer experience on its passenger shuttles.

The new system's in-memory search functionality helps Eurotunnel Le Shuttle pull data from across the business, such as sales information, marketing campaigns, social media mentions and call centre resources, as well as internal teams focused on tunnel maintenance.

The pooled information can be used to get an overview of customer behaviour and service performance.

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The company believes it is better able to assess business demand to plan capacity at the most effective times, including adding additional shuttles to the service at peak times.

As QlikView also incorporates information from social media platforms, the marketing team can analyse how they are being mentioned online in order to get an idea of customer sentiment. They can then quickly take on board what’s being said and prioritise service improvements.

Lymath said the company had bought over 100 licences, but there is scope for more, as other departments start to use the system.

There is also an opportunity for business customers, such as coach companies to be fed this data so that they can enhance their own sales campaigns, he said.

Lymath said: “We needed a business dashboard and analysis tool that could give all members of staff access to the same data at the same time. Our previous system was slow and inefficient, with different staff members and different teams working off different versions.”

We have been hearing for years how CIOs and senior IT professionals need to bury the hatchet with line of business managers and, instead of focusing on the latest bleeding-edge technology for its own sake, seek to better understand the overall strategic objectives of their organisations.